At Brotzu there was a department and it no longer exists. Reason: unclear. There were also studies published in prestigious international scientific journals and they have been withdrawn. The reason: ended up at the center of a high-level academic dispute, they were deemed unreliable.
The connection between the two events is Marco Monticone, professor of physical and rehabilitation medicine at the University of Cagliari: he is the director of Neurorehabilitation at Arnas, the "disappeared" department, but also the author of the disavowed publications - so far without reply - by a team of researchers from Brunel University in London. And while professors are fleas - with failures that appear quite resounding - the south of Sardinia is left without a fundamental health service: patients with serious brain injuries, caused by strokes or accidents, are transferred. Even if the money to set up the ward has been spent and the staff is on hand.
THE GHOST DEPARTMENT. "Neurorehabilitation is a vital department for a hospital like San Michele and it doesn't deserve that power games are played around its top management". Franco Meloni knows Brotzu well. He also led him as general manager. And now on his blog he reconstructs the strange ups and downs of the department, as the regional councilor of the Progressives, Francesco Agus, did through a series of questions.
Neurorehabilitation was on the first floor, then it was moved to the seventh, in view of the definitive transfer to a space at the Businco: "About 300 thousand euros of public money were spent", underlines the former manager. But the move did not take place. In the meantime, to deal with the Covid emergency, in those spaces of the Oncology "the Center for Multiple Sclerosis from the Binaghi hospital was housed, by decision of the Health Department". Neurorehabilitation was closed «and the personnel assigned to the central Rehabilitation service». In the workforce also «a director who, following a special agreement stipulated in 2018, was a professor at the University of Cagliari, According to Meloni "the top management of the company (even if they will perhaps deny it out of official duty), were not exactly satisfied with the assistance functions performed by Monticone who, apparently, preferred - understandably from a certain point of view - to devote himself to his duties as a researcher rather than the tedious duties of a purely charitable nature". The exponent of the Reformers then adds that
